Liftoff
by Ssergit
Summary: A little bit out of character, Sara Sidle and Gil Grissom are on a flight to a seminar when things heat up in midair. Definetly rated M for Mature. .ABANDONED STORY.
1. One

Summary: A little bit out of character, Sara Sidle and Gil Grissom are on a flight to a seminar when things heat up in midair. Definetly rated M for Mature. Submitted in Work In Progress format, although it's not going to be very long, so the chapters will be short. I hope you enjoy!

A/N: I had taken quite a long hiatus, but am back now with a vengeance, so look for new installments on my old WIPs! I just needed to write something new to start myself up again.

**Liftoff**

"I hate Paris in the springtime..." Sara Sidle sang the words under her breath, her eyes tightly closed, hands clutching the armrests tightly, as though she were riding a roller coaster instead of a commercial airplane. Her fellow passenger, Dr. Gil Grissom, was eyeing her nervously. He'd spent most of their time in pre-flight observing the other passengers on the sparsely populated airliner, trying not to think about the nearly four hours of flight time he had ahead of him. It wasn't that he hated flying, as it appeared Sara did--it was her proximity. Her nearness had the power to do terrible, wonderful things to him, and he wasn't quite sure what he planned to do to prevent that. The dreams he'd been having for the past two weeks... his face burned with the memories. Grissom shifted in his seat, needing to adjust his body in the cramped space, not to mention shield his growing reaction to the thought of those dreams.

"I hate Paris in the fall..." This time Grissom heard what Sara was actually singing, not what his mind had replaced with the correct words of the song. He finally let himself look over at her, and when he did, he felt horribly selfish. She looked, in a word, terrified.

"Sara?" He said gently, being careful not to touch her lest he startle her too badly. '_Not that you ever touch her,_' he thought to himself sadly. '_Only in your dreams..._' Grissom shook his head quickly, trying to halt the procession of erotic thoughts that threatened to envelop him.

"I hate Paris in the summer when it-" Sara broke off as Grissom interrupted her, speaking her name with a gentleness that, for just a moment, took her mind off of the fear she was consumed with.

"Sara, why do you hate Paris?" He could tell that she was frightened, but her choice of verse baffled him completely.

"French Kiss," she said, tensely.

"I beg your pardon?" Sara's quiet comment did _not_ help his growing predicament. '_Baseball stats...decomp in an enclosed space... ...Sara's tongue on his earlobe..._' He was losing his battle, and quickly.

"It's a movie," She began, and then gasped as the engine closest to their seat whirred to life. Sara took a deep breath, and glanced over at Grissom. She could tell he was uncomfortable, and took it to mean that her fear was bothering him. She took another deep breath, and continued her explanation.

"Meg Ryan, Kevin Kline. Her character is terrified of flying, but she gets on a plane to Paris..." Sara trailed off, blushing slightly as she looked back over at Grissom, whose eyes seemed to be faraway, unfocused. "You ok?" Sara never thought _she'd_ be asking anyone _else _that on a plane.

"Hmmm?" he still didn't seem to be paying attention. It was Sara's turn to feel selfish--what if _he_ were also afraid to fly? She didn't think he was, but couldn't think of any other reason why he would be so studiously ignoring her. No reason that made sense for today's situation, that is. She figured he had plenty of other reasons to ignore her at the lab...

"Griss?" Her sense of panic intensified as the opposite engine rumbled to life, causing her voice to rise several octaves. To Grissom, this change of tone fit in nicely to the waking dream he was experiencing.

_"Oh Griss..." Sara cried, in response to his gentle thrusting..._

He felt a hand clutch his arm, and it felt much more substantial than the ones around his neck in his daydream. He opened his eyes and blinked at the flat, bright interior of the plane. Sara had his arm in a death grip, and he felt simultaneous shame and disgust at himself. Here she was, looking to him for help with her fear, and he was too busy fantasizing about her. His face burned deep red, and his stomach fluttered with new anxiety. Sara was a trained investigator--and he had _no_ idea what he may have murmured during his imaginings--what if she realized what his problem really was? He took a deep breath, and turned to her.

The sigh that Sara interpreted as stemming from exasperation nearly made her forget how scared she was, which was quite an accomplishment. When she looked at him, however, his expression was not that of pique, but of... If it had been any other man, Sara would have instantly recognized the look in his eyes as lust mixed with concern, but when her mind offered this combination to her, she instantly brushed it away as irrational. In any case, the look was gone in a split second, replaced by a more easily identifiable 'Grissom' look--concern mixed with uneasiness. Grissom would have been very surprised to find that Sara could tell how often he was uncomfortable around her, although she would never have accurately pinpointed the reason. If truth was told, the reason he was uneasy today was slightly different from normal--he was, quite honestly, consumed with desire.

"I asked if you were all right?" Sara's voice, although not quite as anxious as before, still had an uneasy twinge to it that Grissom completely missed, because as she spoke, she turned in her seat to face him--and he just knew what it was she would see, if he couldn't find a way to prevent it.

'_Think, Gil...think!_' he said frantically to himself, his face held rigid through iron concentration, but his eyes darting around for something--anything!--to place strategically on his lap. _TRAY TABLE!_ With one swift movement, he slid the bar that held the tray in place, and let it drop to his lap.

PAIN. Grissom groaned out loud as the table dropped farther down than he'd expected, and mused to himself that perhaps the pain was a good idea.

What he hadn't counted on, though, was Sara.

With a mue of concern, she reached over to lift the offending slab of plastic off of her boss, but her hand stopped dead in its tracks when she discovered something _quite_ unexpected. The discovery of Grissom's...excitement...had the effect that Sara's song had not. Her fear evaporated, replaced by something nearly as dangerous, and far more potent.


	2. Two

A/N: Yep, chapter 2 already...

"Well, well," she said in a soft, throaty whisper, just as Grissom's hand shot out and grasped her questing fingers in an iron grip.

"Sara," he started desperately, in a broken plea.

"I never realized how much you liked flying," she teased, emboldened by the fact that, although he'd stopped her hand from moving, he hasn't _moved_ it. Maybe he couldn't... '_How interesting..._' she thought, in understatement.

Just then, the plane started its speed increase in preparation for liftoff, and the unexpected inertia caused both of them to press back in their seats, hands and all. Sara couldn't help but notice that Grissom seemed to be _quite_ happy about something. '_That's an understatement,_' she thought to herself, and nearly giggled with the pent up tension. The thought emboldened her further, and she lifted her head slightly, leveling a very clear gaze to Grissom's eyes.

'Anything I can help you with, Dr. Grissom?' Sara asked, shocking herself and her seatmate.

"Excuse me, but we have to ask that you replace your tray table to the upright position, please," a harried voice said to their left. Sara jerked upright--or tried to, as her right hand was still locked in place by Grissom's grasp. '_How VERY interesting,_' she thought to herself, '_he still won't let me move my hand..._'

"Griss!" Sara hissed in his ear, wiggling her captive hand desperately to get his attention. "I'm sorry ma'am," she said apologetically to the stewardess, finally wrenching her hand free and replacing the tray table hurriedly. "He's a little afraid of flying," she deadpanned. Attuned to her boss as she was, Sara could feel his body tense up from pent-up laughter at her ironic comment, and had to stifle back a laugh of her own as the attentive flight attendant commented on how difficult flying could be for some passengers.

"Here," the blonde woman said, as she draped a blanket over Grissom's lap for him, causing the two CSI's to sieze up with unreleased laughter again. "This should help you with the temperature difference." She continued to fuss over Grissom some more, making Sara wonder in desperation if the two of them were going to make it without collapsing into helpless laughter before the hapless woman went along her way. "Stress can cause a lot of strange reactions," she continued, seemingly oblivious to the disaster just over the horizon, so to speak. "Just call me if you need any more help!" Her job done, the stewardess continued along the path to the back of the plane, and just in time, too.

Sara buried her head into Grissom's shoulder, her body shaking with quiet laughter. Grissom was still holding onto her hand, albeit at a much safer area between the seats, and she could feel his body moving with the power of his silent glee as well.

When they could finally control their speech once more, Grissom said,

"I should demote you for that, you know." Once more, Sara's body tensed with fear, this time of a whole different nature. Did he mean...

"I haven't had that much trouble controlling my laughter since-" Grissom broke off, shaking his head in disbelief. "I almost lost it when you told her _I_ was afraid of flying!" He chuckled, alleviating Sara's instant anxiety about the cause of his threat.

"I had to say something!" she protested weakly, "or she was going to notice..." Sara trailed off, letting innuendo do its work. He didn't pull away, and, irrationally, Sara looked up at his face as if to reassure her that it was still Gil Grissom in the seat beside her. It was. There was something barely recognizeable in his eyes, a mysterious quality that bolstered her confidence and thrilled her senses all at once. Sara gently disengaged her hand from his warm grasp, and set about 'smoothing the blanket' of nonexistent wrinkles.

Grissoms nerves, which were slightly dulled from the moment of laughter, suddenly shot back to life with an intensity he had truly believed he'd left behind in his teenage years. He reached out again, only to swing at empty air as Sara's hand danced out of his reach.

"Something wrong, sir?" Sara teased him with a rich, velvet tone to her voice that seemed to play his aching nerve endings like a harp. Sara's eyelids lowered as she ever so slowly slid her hand underneath the blanket.

"Is there something wrong with the temperature?" she whispered throatily in his ear, just as her fingertips brushed the warmest area beneath the blanket.

Grissom found that he could...not...move. All sense of where he was and who he was was buried in the heady sensation of Sara's proximity.

"I," he started to say, and stopped. His mind was a blank, and for once, he didn't give a damn. Her hand pressed gently at him, and involuntarily he jerked his hips, wanting more. Once again reason surfaced on the ocean of his senses, and he opened his mouth to say something.

"Shhhhhh," Sara soothed quietly, as her hand undid the buckle of his pants. "Don't think, just feel," she almost pleaded.

She almost needn't have bothered to speak, because the instant her hand touched his bare flesh, Gil Grissom let reason fly out the window. Finally allowing himself the almost unheard-of luxury of relaxing in her presence, he let his head drop back against the headrest and shut his eyes tightly in pure pleasure. Sara rested her head against his chest to listen to his racing heartbeat as her soft touch on him turned more purposeful. The realization that this man who held himself so rigidly in control around her at all times was placing himself literally in her hands was just incredible, and Sara felt strangely humbled by the experience. She suddenly understood the feeling that some people got when they visited Las Vegas--that inhibitions were something you checked at the door. Conquering her fear in such an erotic way had the same effect on Sara, and when Grissom started to let out a low moan of appreciation, Sara followed her own advice, and kissed him gently--partly to quiet his growling reaction, partly to feel the intensity of it firsthand.

Who would ever have thought their first kiss would be like _this_?


End file.
